In enterprise business systems, it is frequently advantageous to provide customization tools that allow a customer to define the behavior of certain software components without changing the underlying source code. One way to customize the behavior of a system component is through the use of a derivation table. A derivation table assigns an input vector to an output vector. The derivation is performed while running the relevant software component or application. Typically, the customizing of the rules in the derivation table is done once at a customizing point in time (e.g., customization is static). In other words, a derivation table can be understood as a function which maps an input set to an output set.
When generating source code, the order of input values (e.g., input vectors) to be analyzed or processed by a given application or program can influence the efficiency and/or effectiveness of the processing or analyzing.